The Implacable Grey Knight Paladins

[It didn't take much effort to get Bryce to agree to contribute to the blog. In addition to some of his excellent modeling work, I hope he'll also share some of the tactics that have made him so successful (yes, I do have ulterior motives, what of it?). -James]

Last weekend the group got together for another rousing game of Warhammer 40k. The scenario; take and hold mission. Luckily I completed another gaming board so there were two games going; Dark Eldar vs. Ultramarines and Grey Knights vs. Imperial Guard. I was the poor sap who faced off against the Grey Knights (my Grey Knights by the way, a friend was borrowing the army) with my poor "deer in the head lights Steel Legion".

Turn 1 - The game did not start well, the guard just couldn't land a hit except a VERY lucky Hydra Flak Tank landing two wounds on the Dreadknight, but luckily enough the other team didn't do much either.

Turn 2 - The Grey Knights Land Raider unloaded five spooty Paladins on my command squad and they ate soylent green for dinner that round. Not to mention that Castellan Crowe and a purifier squad now held the objective.

Turn 3 - Guards Revenge. Dreadknight...dead. Land Raider...exploded. Castellan Crowe...the way of the Dodo. But now the paladins held the objective.

Turn 4 - Manticore is now out of ammunition. Down to one Sentinel, heavy bolter squad, hydra flak tank, and a Basilisk. He's got a four man Paladin squad. The question now is who will win (you might be thinking the guy with the most guns)? WRONG!

Turn 5 - The Paladins hold out, successfully making 11-2+ armour saves and 1-5+ invulnerable save and the Grey Knights pull through to win the game.

Moral of the story, never underestimate the staying power of Paladins and the uncanny ability for your foe to roll AMAZING armor saves. The Guard went home with their tails between their legs that night.

[Models by Games Workshop]

Ultramarines Sniper Scouts WIP

With the exception of Bryce, our group of 40K players are all relatively new to the game and are slowly growing their armies. By necessity, our games have been low point affairs of about 500 points per army. I think it's been found by most Space Marine players that 500 points will buy you very little once you've met your HQ and troop requirements. I could easily field two five man Tactical Squads, but that would leave both squads without special or heavy weapons and make my job even harder (Bryce hates that 5th edition requires Space Marines to have ten men in order to field special and heavy weapons). For that reason, we've been playing by a house rule allowing me to bring a single ten man Tactical Squad.

Since I don't want to play by house rules for longer than necessary, I'm working on a Scout Squad with four sniper rifles and a missile launcher. Not only are five Scouts cheaper than a five man Tactical Squad, but they have the Infiltrate and Scout special rules and can carry a heavy bolter or missile launcher. I'm simultaneously working on Sergeant Telion, although I won't be using him until we start playing higher point games.

I primed Telion and the Scouts just before Thanksgiving dinner

Sergeant Telion

Sergeant Telion represents my first pewter model. With Games Workshop replacing all its pewter models with resin, I felt compelled to buy all named Ultramarine figures in metal (in part because I like the heft of a pewter model). By late October, Bryce was able to find Chief Librarian Tigurius at the local game store and picked it up for me, thus completing my pewter collection.

A New 40K Convert?

By the time I played my first game of Warhammer 40,000, Bryce had been looking for someone to play against for some time. It seems that 40K has a tendency to instill a missionary-like zeal for converting others to the game. Within a few months, Jonathan, a friend of mine with whom I walk to the bus stop and whose brother used to play both 40K and Warhammer fantasy had started to show interest. At about the same time, another coworker, Kevin, who enjoys painting the Lord of the Rings figures, also expressed interest. Soon Bryce and I were incorporating Jonathan and Kevin into our games. The best part is that neither Jonathan nor Kevin showed any interest in any of the armies that Bryce or I were playing. Kevin wanted to play Dark Eldar and Jonathan wanted to play Orks. This has led to a lot more variety in our games. In fact, the growth of our little cabal encouraged Bryce to build a new Imperial Guard army. The Imperial Guard had always been his favorite army, but with no one to play with, Bryce had sold off nearly all his figures.

This past Friday took an even more interesting turn. Bryce and I successfully convinced our boss, Carl, to participate in a game. His first game was a 500 point fight between my Ultramarines and a Tau army borrowed from Bryce. Usually my Space Marines don't have a whole lot of luck in such low point games, especially when I have few heavy weapons while the Tau are fielding three Broadside Battlesuits. Usually I'm forced to do a Pickett's Charge, in which I march the Ultramarines across the table while taking heavy fire from the Tau's guns. This is horribly costly and I rarely have any Marines left for the assault. However, this time I teleported a Terminator squad within close range of the Tau forces. Despite the strength of Carl's army, and the coaching he got from from Bryce, the Ultramarines were able to hold their own.

A Space Marine Terminator Squad: Not something
Xeno scum wants to find on its doorstep
[Models by Games Workshop]

After the first game was called, Carl's Tau and Jonathan's Orks faced off against Bryce's new Steel Legion Imperial Guard and my Ultramarines. It was a pretty evenly matched game, with the Imperial Guard and the Tau handling the long range shooting while the Space Marines and the Orks fought it out in close combat. Vastator participated in the game, although it's main gun met an untimely end from a Broadside's gun. As we often do when it gets too late at night for Bryce and I to remember the rules anymore, we finally called the game before either side was annihilated. Although the combined Space Marine and Imperial Guard forces were left with more points on the table, we had no way to counter the remaining Broadsides. Thus, we called it a draw.

It's expected for Guard and Marines to form
alliances, but I can't really see an Ork-Tau alliance
[Models by Games Workshop]

The purpose of the night's game was to introduce Carl to 40K in the hopes that he would enjoy it. We may have succeeded better than we thought we would. Our unconverted coworkers could only shake their heads when they caught the boss discussing the game with Kevin the following Monday. Even better, Carl has decided that the Tau are probably not for him, but that he's very interested in the Necrons. He's even done some research on the army. I had been thinking of playing Necrons after completing the Ultramarines, but I will gladly let a new player have dibs on the army of his choice. If Carl does indeed become our Necron player, we will have a thoroughly diverse little 40K club.

The Atomic Spud's Warhammer 40K Blog

Thanks to Bryce, a coworker and good friend of mine, I've been a Warhammer 40,000 addict since May 2011. I immediately preferred Space Marines, the first army I ever played, and quickly began an army of Ultramarines. After several months of playing regularly, Bryce and I were joined in our games by two other coworkers.

I have maintained a blog, The Atomic Spud, since November 2008. The Atomic Spud has primarily been a place for movie and book reviews, political commentary, and other (hopefully) amusing anecdotes from my life. Unfortunately, the blog was quickly overrun by posts about 40K, which appeals to a smaller audience than the other material. For that reason, I've started The Atomic Spud's Warhammer 40K Blog; a more appropriate place for battle reports, army photos, and other 40K miscellanea.

Warhammer 40K-related posts that previously appeared on The Atomic Spud have been reproduced here with some slight editing. Since they were originally intended for an audience that is unfamiliar with the game, there is a lot of explanation that is unnecessary for the average 40K player. I like to think of these posts as a brief history of a rapidly developing addiction.

New Warhammer 40K Model

Again I've neglected my blog [The Atomic Spud] in favor of Warhammer 40K. I finished my first figures, a squad of Tactical Marines, earlier this summer. I followed those up with a Terminator Squad and a Dreadnought walker. Now I've finally finished my first tank, of which I'm rather proud. The tank, a "Vindicator" model, carries a Demolisher cannon; the most powerful gun that the Space Marines can field. Since the dark future of 40K portrays mankind as having somehow reverted to a medieval culture that uses elements of the Latin language, I've named my Vindicator Vastator, which is Latin for "Destroyer". Yes, naming a tank "Destroyer" in Latin is the extent of my creativity.

Vastator actually participated in its first game last Saturday. It was mostly complete, although the winch holding the ridiculously large shell wasn't attached, several details weren't yet painted, and it was missing the final washes (the very thin coats that give the model its dirty look). It got off a single shot in the first turn, was stunned and unable to fire in the second, and was destroyed in the third. However, that single shot tore the heart out of Bryce's command squad. The points value of the figures killed by one shot exceeded the points value of my tank and the loss of his command squad hampered the effectiveness of his army for the rest of the game. Once that happened, anything else Vastator could have done would have been icing on the cake.

Now that I've finished the Vindicator, I intend to move on to a squad of Sniper Scouts. And I expect to make another relatively pricey order at TheWarStore later this month to add a Predator tank to my collection as well as a few other squads of infantry.

Another Warhammer 40K Death Match

Bryce very selfishly ran off to Hawaii with his wife last weekend, so this past Saturday marked two weeks without playing a game of 40K. However, last night we were finally able to get together for yet another round of our favorite unhealthy obsession. Saturday night's game of 40K was notable for a few reasons. First, it was our first game played at my home rather than at Bryce's. Second, it was my first game played entirely with my own figures rather than with a mix of my models supplemented by some of Bryce's. Finally, I showed that an army of standard Space Marines can take on the elite Grey Knights and make it an extremely close fight.

This time around I took the "Sir Robin" approach to the battle; i.e., I bravely ran away while shooting everything I had. Since the Grey Knights are geared towards close combat rather than a shooting fight, this approach significantly leveled the playing field. I lost by a small margin, but the game could have ended very differently if a single dice roll had resulted in a three instead of a two. My Dreadnought simply needed to score one more hit against Bryce's Dreadknight, after which it could have turned its heavy weapon against his remaining two Knights. Unfortunately, I had burned up a lot of my luck earlier in the game, the shot missed, and the Dreadnought was forced into close combat with the Dreadknight. The two Dreads duked it out and annihilated each other. Considering that his model was worth a lot more points than mine, I wasn't too sad about the outcome of that particular fight.

Dreadnought vs. Dreadknight: Grudge match of the week
[Models by Games Workshop]

My Poor, Neglected Blog

A few months ago my blog [The Atomic Spud] was averaging over 100 visits a day, thanks to Google. Well, I guess that Google's search algorithm is affected by how often you update your blog; I've since dropped to about 60 hits a day. I can only blame this on one thing: Warhammer 40,000.

Until Bryce introduced me to that infernal game (that wonderful, awesome game) I was on the Internet all the time. I actually knew what was happening in the world, I followed politics, I read b-movie reviews, and I updated my blog frequently. Now I don't even know what Republicans are running for president (not that it matters, I'd vote for him or her over Obama anyday), the list of B-Masters reviews that I need to catch up on has grown significantly, and my blog was updated only once last month (and then it was a 40K post). Netflix was the best entertainment-related thing ever during the B40K era ("Before Warhammer 40,000"). Now I've had a couple DVDs for nearly three months and I've still not watched them.

How can I not add this guy to my collection?
[Model by Games Workshop]

It's not like I'm playing the game all the time. In fact, we only play it once a week. However, since I'm actively building my army, I end up painting figures almost every night. This process takes a lot of time since I have an obsessive, perfectionist personality. I had told my wife that once my Space Marine army was built, I would have more time in the evenings. Unfortunately, 40K is addictive and Bryce and I have been talking about expanding the number of armies we have to add some variety to our games. Specifically, I've considered getting a Chaos Daemon army to complement Bryce's Grey Knights (the Grey Knights are Space Marines who specialize in daemon-hunting).

So, I hope to get back into blogging by posting a few book and movie reviews, maybe a couple CD (i.e., mp3 album) reviews, and some political commentary... Oh, who am I kidding? This will probably be my only post for the month and I'll spend the rest of September building all of this stuff:

This is about $200 dollars worth of 40K stuff